Kiss My Knits!

HOLY CRAP. It’s a post-Christmas miracle! This is the proposal from my kid’s music teacher. She was asking for enough xylophones for her music room for all the students to use in a given class period. The Browncoats and friends raised about $800 smackers for that proposal, out of a needed $4000+. I genuinely thought there was absolutely no way the proposal would be funded. But there it sits, only $95 short of its goal with only nine days left to go.

WHAT HAPPENED? Did Bill Gates take up the marimba? Did the ghost of Lionel Hampton smile down upon Charlotte? Did some eccentric billionaire watch Em’s production of the Music Man and remember the school in his will?

I have no idea… but wow. Just wow.

The good: Shedir is done! So that’s one more project off the list of things I owe people. It turned out quite nicely, if I do say so myself. It took about 1.1 balls of Rowan Calmer, the nicest artificial fiber you’ll ever work with. This one went much faster than the first one I made. I keep thinking this cable pattern would look great on a baby sweater or on a pair of socks.

(P.S. – Turtlegirl76, I was right. There’s an error on row 63 of the pattern. It is indeed missing an asterisk. Thanks for checking for me!



The bad: I knocked out some stitch marker parts, and apparently it’s not the temperature that makes them crack, it’s the spray varnish I favor. These were sprayed in my kitchen with the home thermostat set to 70 degrees (I was taking no chances). Crack city! That’s unfortunate, because it’s much quicker to spray them than to brush them. So I suppose I need to figure out whether it’s this particular substance that causes them to crack, or the act of spraying them at all. These seem solid enough, so I can probably still use them, after I test them to be sure they’re okay.

The ugly: Look at what my camera is doing! It’s been doing this for a while, but I thought maybe it was an issue with having a low battery. No such luck; the battery was fine when this picture was taken. I have to sit patiently and wait for it to clear and then try to snap my picture before it gets all pink and wiggly again. As you can see, I failed in the picture to the right.

We’ve had our little Canon Elph SD100 for several years now and it’s always worked well. Hopefully it’ll hang in there a little longer and we can use it until it doesn’t run anymore. Just like we do our cars!

The Awesome? My dad and his friend Ellyn. After my mini-freakout the other day, they volunteered to come over and watch Emily tonight so that Steve and I could go out. Right now we’re thinking we’ll go see Juno, depending on when showtimes are. Really, though, just getting out to go anywhere is a blessing. Thanks so much, Dad and Ellyn!

Time to go out and run all the errands that keep the household running semi-smoothly. Later, y’all!

ETA: Serenity earrings, actual size. They’re for a teenager. 🙂

At left: pumpkin pancakes make things better.

At right: “Only takes one ball of yarn” my eye.

Blah. I’m just in a mood.

The week in mail.

109 words

But I’ll bet I could do better.

So I’m trying to do better about getting more sleep, which was completely stymied last night when I wasn’t able to get out to knitting night until 9pm, then had to stop by the store on the way home, then had to answer some Jayne hat mail that stacked up while I was in Richmond Tuesday and catching up on Wednesday. So I turned to a copy of Prevention magazine I had on hand (thanks for the subscription, Mom!) that had tips for waking up refreshed. I quote,

Note good things to come
Before going to bed, put a sticky note on your alarm clock reminding you of something fun or exciting that’s happening the next day. “Because of hormonal shifts that occur while we’re asleep, the majority of us wake up feeling a bit down or in a so-so mood,” says Dana Lightman, PhD, a behavioral psychologist in Abington, PA. “Remembering that you’re having lunch with a friend or that your favorite TV show will be on that night gives you a quick lift.”

Okay, let’s try that! You all know what an optimist I am, how I try to find the silver lining in any situation. So I got a sticky pad and a pen and thought for a moment.

And thought. And thought. And thought.

I couldn’t come up with a single exciting or fun thing that I had going on today. Nothing. Unbelievable. That made me feel worse than I did before I started this whole exercise.

So help me out, guys. I want to live vicariously. What’s something fun or happy that YOU have going on today?

In the meantime, I’m off to run errands and then pack up a hat and six kits.

When Emily was a toddler, she loved Clementine oranges. Couldn’t get enough. I had to limit them or she’d get diaper rash from all the acid. Somewhere down the line, though, she stopped eating them. As she’s gotten older, her diet has gotten more and more limited. I’m working to reverse that. And so, I pull a page from the Mom Trick Book. It’s called “Food that looks like stuff.”

It’s working. She smiled really big and is happily eating them. Of course, I also told her that she had to, and she’s very good about that sort of thing. She’s picking every single bit of the skin off of the wedges, but I remember doing that with oranges when I was her age too, so that’s fine. I’m not going to complain – as long as she’s eating them.

Yesterday morning, I started out from Charlotte to Richmond to see my friend Pat. I got a little bit of a later start than I’d planned because I wanted to finish up a little project to take up to her. However, I still felt I had a good chance of being able to see her while she was awake.

WRONG!

On the near side of the NC/VA border, right in between no and where, I swerved to avoid a giant piece of metal in the road. As you may have guessed from the picture to the right, I didn’t swerve far enough. I zipped along for another half mile or so before the telltale “kathunkathunkathunk” sound alerted me to the fact that something was up. Yep. Flat tire.

Let me tell you, those lug nuts were superglued on there. I saw my hopes of making it to Richmond at all start to go up in smoke. But kindness and generosity are not dead! For lo! A trucker stopped! And not just any trucker, but a trucker with a can of WD-40!

It didn’t look like he was going to be able to get the tire off either, but this guy just would not give up. With a burst of strength that would put the Hulk to shame, he muscled the last two lug nuts off. YAY! He got the doughnut on for me, reminded me that it was only rated for about 50 miles per hour (which is good, because I’d forgotten) and let me know which exit to take to find a mechanic.

Things I know about this trucker: he’s from Hickory, where he lives with his two daughters and his wife, who has fibromyalgia. He was driving from Winston Salem to southern New Jersey, a destination he had to make by morning. He was hauling empty bottles up to the Arizona tea company.

Things I don’t know about this trucker: his name. Thank you, anonymous good Samaritan.

So I crept slowly up the highway to exit 12 on the other side of the VA border. The service station there did indeed have a tire for me.

Them: You want that new or used?
Me: As long as it rolls, I’m okay with it.
Them: Okay, used it is. I guess we’ll getcha one of them round-shaped tires, then.

Heh. I passed the time petting the gas station kittens, which they tried very, very hard to foist off on me. The lure of “free kitten with every tire” didn’t work on me. The mechanic joked, “I keep saying, if we just start putting ’em in people’s cars, they’ll get attached to ’em and keep ’em!” I promised to pass along that they had free kittens, which these brusque guys have gotten their shots, litterbox trained, and named. So I’m passing it along. There are very sweet free kittens at the garage off of exit 12 in South Hill, VA.

I called who said that Pat was sleeping now. Well, at least I would still be able to sign her book. I got in to Richmond after dark and went up to Pat’s room. She was indeed asleep, but I wrote her a note.

I also left her a little something. Pat gave me some roving on our trip to Raleigh last summer. I had dyed it and spun some of it up. And so, knitting straight from the bobbin, I made a small gift for her from the gift she’d given me. I attached it to her book. I hope she’ll like it. At the risk of being corny, there’s a lot of love in that heart.